CSPrep.org × CollegePrep.org · Rolling Admissions
A highly selective college-admissions mentorship program for the world’s most extraordinary pre-college students: olympiad medalists, young researchers, inventors and founders. Every Fellow is paired with students and alumni of top institutions such as Stanford, MIT, Harvard and Yale.
Written by a 26-year-old patent clerk.
Why the Fellowship exists
To the ones who taught themselves calculus from a library book.
To the ones kept awake at 3 a.m. by a proof that is almost there.
To the ones who built the thing before anyone asked them to.
They get called precocious. Obsessive. Too much.
History eventually uses another word for them: first.
Talent like that is rare, and it turns up everywhere: in Bucharest and Buenos Aires, in Kuala Lumpur and Kathmandu, in small towns where no one has heard of the Ivy League. The guidance to carry it through the doors of the world’s great universities does not.
The Quine Fellowship is that guidance. Personalized, free, and reserved for the few who are ambitious.
The next Einstein won’t look like the last one.
We’re looking anyway.Who should apply
The Fellowship is for high-school and gap-year students applying to undergraduate programs in the United States, from any country. We look for one thing: evidence that you already work at the highest level of your field.
Medalists and national-team members at the international science olympiads, and top finishers in the national olympiads that select those teams, from around the world.
Not every genius sits an exam. If your work makes experts stop and look twice, this door is yours.
Steve Jobs never won an olympiad. He dropped out of college, sat in on a calligraphy class, and a decade later gave the Macintosh its beautiful typography.
What Fellows receive
Olympiad-level talent rarely comes with admissions-level strategy. Your mentor works alongside you on every part of the application, for the whole cycle.
Your medal is not your story. The reason you chased it might be. Mentors help you find the essay no one else could have written, then sharpen it draft by draft, along with every supplement, until each sentence earns its place.
When to apply early, and where. How to turn a spike of brilliance into ten activity lines and five honors. Who should write your recommendations, and how to walk into an interview ready.
Beyond the rankings: the labs, faculty, research programs and communities where you will do your best work, and the schools most likely to recognize what you bring.
Need-based aid, merit scholarships and national awards, plus the forms and aid conversations most families face alone. Especially valuable for international applicants.
The mentors
Fellows are matched with current students and alumni of top institutions such as Stanford, MIT, Harvard and Yale, paired by field, ambition and story. They know which essays worked, which decisions mattered, and what it feels like to be an applicant.
The record
MITStanfordHarvardYale
Princeton
Columbia
Penn
Brown
Dartmouth
Cornell
Oxford
CambridgeThe Fellowship builds upon two non-profit projects built by students, for students. For more than a decade, CollegePrep.org has offered free SAT and ACT preparation made by high-achieving students. CSPrep.org has coached young programmers toward the International Olympiad in Informatics, with mentors who are IOI medalists themselves.
The Quine Fellowship is our flagship program: the same belief that talent deserves guidance, now aimed at the most consequential application of a young life.
University names and marks belong to their respective institutions and appear here only to identify where students we have advised were admitted and where our mentors study or studied. The Quine Fellowship is independent and is not affiliated with or endorsed by any university.
How it works
A small cohort, chosen carefully, then supported through every deadline of the admissions year.
One online application: what you’ve achieved, what you want to do next, and why it matters to you.
We read applications with care. Selection is highly competitive by design.
Shortlisted applicants join us for a short video call. No trick questions, just a conversation.
You’re paired with a mentor from top institutions such as Stanford, MIT, Harvard or Yale.
Regular sessions and written feedback, from your college list to your final decision.
A typical U.S. cycle. Deadlines vary by school, so always confirm dates on each college’s own website.
Yes. The Quine Fellowship is a non-profit initiative of CSPrep.org and CollegePrep.org. There are no fees at any stage, and no one can pay for a place.
If your work is exceptional by any serious measure, whether research, a company, an invention or a body of creative work, then yes. Door II exists for you.
Absolutely. We welcome applicants from every country who plan to apply to undergraduate programs in the United States. Mentors can also help you navigate financial aid as an international applicant.
As early as you can. Mentorship does the most good before your college list and essays are set, ideally in the spring or summer before your final year of high school. We still consider strong applicants at any point in the cycle.
Depending upon availability, by field, goals and the kind of guidance you need. An informatics olympian might be paired with a Stanford computer scientist; a young biologist with a Harvard alum who did undergraduate research in the life sciences.
Regular sessions with your mentor, plus written feedback on drafts between sessions: college list, essays, activities, recommendations, interviews and scholarships, through to your final decision.
No one honestly can. What we promise is that we will give our best advice, free of cost.
A quine is a program whose output is its own source code. It is also how this works: our mentors are the students who came through before you, and the Fellows we take in are the mentors we will have in four years. The programme reproduces itself.
No. Our mentors are students and alumni of these universities who volunteer in a personal capacity. The Fellowship is independent and is not endorsed by any university.
Applications are open
If you have already done something extraordinary, let us help you take it further. Applying is free, and so is everything after.
Apply to the Fellowship